EU U-turns on caching ban decision

It's nothing to do with copyright after all

In the last hour the European Commission has made an amendment to its proposals to ban caching -- a move that would have brought the Net to its knees if it had been enforced. With the inclusion of a nine-word amendment in the Report on Copyright in the Information Society, the EU has said that bona fide caching is legitimate and is not a threat to copyright. The amendment reads: "...including those which facilitate effective functioning of transmission systems..." It may not seem much -- it may not even make a great deal of sense -- but this insertion is a major U-turn by the EU which has been lobbied mercilessly by the music industry to protect copyright. It means that caching is no longer a copyright issue even though the music industry has spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to convince Eurocrats otherwise. Anyone who has been unlucky enough to follow the working of European government and who still has any faith in the political system might be interested to know that bigotry and ignorance still have a place even in the enlightened passages of power in Brussels. "Why don't you stop moaning and just pay the royalty fees," said one curmudgeonly Eurocrat to a senior industry figure. Charming. ® See alsoAnti-caching lobby wins round one of Euro voteMusic industry anti-caching letter